/CRAB/3 oh what joy.

Pre tournament:

Some past about me, in around 2021, i used to be in a discord about webcomics, i mostly joined there because there was going to be a collab comic with multiple web comics and i wanted to be part of it (i had Sevod real good at the time before i decided to shut it off), while the whole project ended as incomplete, i got to know fellow webcomic artists that would later on participate on an OC tournament, one that was named CRAB, now i wasn't sure if it was crab 1 or 2, but the point is, when i had read of crab 3 being a thing ng, i recognized it and i though "Why the fuck not, i need an excuse to draw comics again" and when you think about it, an OC tournament is exactly that.

After getting in the tournament i was in relief to witness so many friends i used to know back then be in the tournament, with some fresh new faces inbetween, it was nice to see, eventually after i got added to a team, i had one goal, to have fun with it, but i was glad to know my other team members were more than happy to support me on those endeavors.

ROUND 1:

Boy, i got to admit, the way the Gamemaster cooked the first round was not a good sign for me at the start, then again the round was mostly voted in a poll so i couldn't really lament him for him to take a while, it could have been worse though, it could have been 4 people who have no idea on what were doing.

Regardless, my character was set out with a faction and i had prompt to realize.

And now some self reviewing, in all my comics, i never bothered to script my shit, mostly because the idea of S&G was essentially writing on the GO mentality, this mentality was also in the Original flip notes so that i could cook up something simple just to fuck around in (this was also why Sack looks different from the current movies because it's an evolved design of the flipnote look),

it was clear to me this mentality was going to bite me in the ass given i lost r1 by 1 vote (24 out of 25, but and if it were to a voting extension it would have been a tie probably), A lot of people in crab were people that understood one thing, being all show means jack shit if it doesn't have depth.

As for my R1 This is my last comic where i bother to add cameos of other crabs in it, (not counting my intermissions though), i admit when making these i mostly focus on the plot, the Crabs and the prompt given so adding cameos is less than a focus, especially when you have a deadline.

Regardless to all of that, my opponent won despite my team believing i was going to win this (even my opponent believed it being the case given he dropped the vote for me) and with an achievement like that, it made me believe that if they aim to make really good stuff, They will hit it out of the park with it, they just need to focus!

AFTERMATH OF ROUND 1:

A small note about Sack, i wanted to make it so in the tournament he would have no gun or google on his side, in hindsight this was probably a bad idea given of other members were going hard with the powers and shit, my opponent entry in their R1 had sack using his gun (they told me about this in advance and i gave them the go ahead), but regardless of that i had a great idea to reinclude sack's gun, cue the first intermission(which is just the first page), And now sack has an Upgraded gun and also knows how to use (as small jab against my first round opponent).

This is also where the character in the introductory comic for sack gets a name, "Wizhat", i admit i had bigger plans for the second intermission with him but i never bothered with it, so i went to add him as voting art for R3.

ROUND 2:

This one was by far a lot more straightforward, in essence the themeing was IKIGAI (WHAT ARE YOU FIGHTING FOOOOOOOOOOOR!!!), and i got paired with a jester with the prompt to kill god, i was going to wonder how i would put up the idea until the gamemaster says "by the way you must take 1 or more potions to make the round count, and 7 pages max for entry." each potion was the following: Turn into a furry/Human (for sack it would turn him into a human), change your gender, Age up or down, or turn into japanese media character, i went with the last potion and sack is now A kirby, along with his gun sack walked all smug into his next opponent.

To review my work, this entry is the most confusing of them all unless you are a kirby fan, even then the last page is the most confusing unless you haven't played megaton punch from kirby super star, but even then the lack of spacing and the paneling at the first and last page could have been better, the 7 pages limit kind of hindered me on that front, i would have expected it to lose the round if it wasn't for the fact that my opponent was part of one of the 2 teams that were doing Rebellion plot against the gamemaster that expanded most of R2, they were trying to get our group to collaborate with but it didn't lead anywhere, regardless, My opponent was heavily against what it was happening and as a result they deleted their original entry and made a hyper quick entry about how their character tampered with the rebellion's Super Powered Crab weapon by Fucking blowing his head off, (fun fact: that crab for R2 match was against one of my team members, and the theme was hentai, because of the blog rating i am not going to link it, at the very least though, that crab didn't win the votes)

Despite that, My entry won because it stood with the theme, i would later found out that from one of my opponent team members that in the WIP of the proper entry that they were not going on the theme sadly, so in either case i would have won.

As for the rebellion that happened, well let's just say a ton of crabs ended up in the Gamemaster Nuremberg for their crimes and it did eventually lead to our team leader enter in there for lore reasons, however that didn't last long as by entering the prison the medals that he got wouldn't count so he'd rejoin the team for the final round.

AFTERMATH OF ROUND 2:

Given now this was the last round, shit was about to go BIG, Gamemaster wanted for round 3 to be so that every character was at their peak to fight, given that is the main theme for R3 was fighting, every crab was showing their upgraded full powered forms and what did sack have? Nothing, Sack had no peak form so to speak so instead i though the best way to do so was to bring back his AI Butler to aid him and his team in the round(all the pages after the first).

Ever since i have introduced Sack in this my team, there was some hopes that Google would join in and this was the perfect excuse for that, especially on how i planned google to be, i also used the comic to expand on sack reason why sack never understood he could won a wish instead of what dimnim or whatever.

ROUND 3:

Oh my god, Round 3, before i knew the staging was, i already prepared a stage for it, i booted up trenchbroom, made a map and exported the OBJ with the textures and applied it to Blender and had a really stylized feel, then the stage was set to be the bucket and the plan went awry, i tried salvage it, but didn't feel the same, so i decided to remake the stage in blender, and it came out better actually, not that it really mattered much given the main point was to use it to make bg shots for the flash animations.

As for the animation proper, the lack of writing really aimed me to get a nuclear bomb in my ass, the difference being however, i didn't care, i didn't care about the impact, the blast, the heat of the explosion and the radiation.

You can see by the time i made sack launch the opponent that i was like "I wanna be done with this" attitude, though i am glad the voice acting was appreciated.

On top of all of that, the animation was all secret, i never decided to release sneak peaks on to the animation itself outside of the team, my opponent(who was also keeping their entry secret) had a hint of it, but it was just stills and they could have been fooled for being comic panels.

When we released our entries, my opponent showed off entry being a comic, one that according to them was most high effort one they could make and given that they use a phone, i can hand them for the hard work.

Once the voting had begun, i saw many people voting for my opponents entry and i feared i was going to lose, then i saw the results and we were TIED, but if you saw the results, Berbie decided sack had to win.

honestly, when that happened i legit felt incredulous, the writings was in the wall, i was fully going to accept the silver medal, and yet, i tied/won.

That is not to say that my opponent didn't do jack, apparently it's a common thing that animation can beat a comic book even on a high quality level but this match up really showed that it's not the size, it's how you use it.

AFTERMATH OF ROUND 3:

The result later came and the final ranking arrived, the gamemaster started at the bottom of the teams, we didn't see our names at the bottoms until we reach the top 3, and i honestly was going to be happy if we reached that rank but then, the gamemaster states that it's A 3 WAY TIE.

i stood up on 1am to get this, i legitimacy didn't believe it, my team didn't believe it, the other 2 teams didn't bloody believe it either.

To break the tie, the gamemaster asked the team leaders to provide the wish of their tied team in 10 minutes, thankfully, the wish discussion for us was already done, around i believe in the production of round 2 comic, so for the most part we had already set up everything, however, the same couldn't be said for the other teams because they didn't expect it to be short, eventually the voting of each wish begun.

From the 3 teams, one was to turn the Bucket into a dark carnival of death and to make it so those who want to wish had to play coinflip with their universe, one was to send everybody back home and ours was to basically make my team gods more powerful than the gm and decide the fates of all the members along with their wishes.

1 day later (at 1 am still), and after one of the team member got hard on trying to make a change, even if small, my teams wish was the winning one and that's where [B]RAT PACK won, and as for sack well there was his...

... EPILOGUE.

This one, i admit, i just made it very cheaply but i felt like i had left the character development door opened and it now needed to be closed so that sack can review the changes, especially on the emotional side, so this was a way to analyse the things that have happened, as for the my opponents wishes as of the writing of this, i have yet to see what are they going to have their character wish, as for how Sack (with the help of google) would handle them, that is going to be another question.

POST TOURNAMENT:

This experience was magical, it really woke up that need to draw comics again and the fact that it wanted to make me aim to improve myself along was nothing more than great, i had my pros and cons and but everybody i talked to was nice and i had fun, so it's only fair i take what i have learned and make something great with it.

MY THANKS:

I want to thank the GM for the tournament;

I want to thank my opponents for being present and gave me a fight for the gold;

I want to thank all of the people who participated this;

I want to thank my teamates: Vanderino, sitonmyfacepoppy, Ardihel, Bobby-g and devoidgazer;

I want to thank my mum who's going to read these entries after i finish this;

I want to thank my ex coworkers when i worked on retail that enjoyed the comics i have made even if they didn't understood anything about english;

And of course i want to thank you for reading all of this.

The doodles i did in the tournament are now fully visible!